Medication in Movement

Tai Chi has often be described as "meditation in movement" and it is true that Tai Chi can be practiced as a Meditation exercise, and can also be practiced in order top help regular Sitting  Meditation as we practice in Zen. Now, according to a Harvard Medical School newsletter, tai chi is increasingly seen as a form of "medication in motion."

Visit an urban park in China any given morning or late afternoon, and you're likely to find elderly people engaged in Tai Chi.

 

Visit an urban park in China any given morning or late afternoon, and you're likely to find elderly people engaged in Tai Chi.

A study out this week in Archives of Internal Medicine says it may help people suffering from heart failure  feel better about life. In a quality of life questionnaire the researchers gave out, those who practiced tai chi scored significantly higher than those who hadn't been doing the movement. The tai chi group also reported an improvement in mood.

 

Heart failure is a tough disease to live with; the shortness of breath and low energy that can come because the heart can't pump enough blood make physical activity unappealing. "Historically, patients with chronic systolic heart failure were considered too frail to exercise and, through the late 1980s, avoidance of physical activity was a standard recommendation," the study's authors write.

It's been shown to be useful in treating a wide range of diseases from breast cancer to Parkinson's. The National Institutes of Health has also jumped on board and is funding a variety of studies on tai chi for chronic disease.

The Archives of Internal Medicine study is the first large clinical trial to look at whether a tai chi program can do anything for people with heart failure. The researchers recruited 100 people with the chronic condition from heart clinics in Boston. About half were randomly assigned to receive a 12-week tai chi exercise program. The other half got a heart health education program.

The tai chi program started off with some traditional warm-up exercises of arm swinging, gentle stretches, breathing, and visualization techniques. Then patients learned five simple movements designed to release tension in the body, increase awareness of breathing, and relax the body and mind. Patients got an instructional video tape, and were encouraged to practice at home at least 3 times a week.

The study authors say there's a usually a strong relationship between depression and heart failure, so the fact that tai chi helped cheer people up was an especially good sign.

Tai Chi eases depression for the Elderly

More than 2 million people over the age of 65 and 50 % of people living in nursing homes suffer from depression.

In the next 35 years, the number of Americans over 65 will double and the number of those over 85 will triple.

So here is the $1,000,000.00 question : How can elderly people fight depression ?

Researchers from the University of California in Los Angeles, studied 112 older adults suffering from major depression. Their average age was about 70.

Each patient received a common antidepressant during one month. 73 participants in the group showed partial improvement and were assigned to 10 weeks of either a Tai Chi class or a Health Education class including 10 minutes of  basic stretching exercises. Both classes lasted two hours once a week.

After 10 weeks of Tai Chi, 94 % of the participants showed marked improvement on depression scales, compared with 77 % in the health education group. 

Also 65 % of the people in the Tai Chi group experienced remission, compared with 51 % in the education group.

The Tai Chi group also showed marked improvement in measures of physical function, cognitive tests and blood tests measuring levels of inflammation.

According to Dr. Lavretsky, lead author of the study “If a psychiatrist were to add exercise like Tai Chi, which is very non-demanding and easy to access, that would be a very beneficial thing instead of adding another drug.”

Dr. Lavretsky added that one reason both study groups showed improvement was that all the patients probably benefited from interaction with other people. “I’m sure the social aspect contributed to the improvement in both groups,’’ she said. “In the control group we see improvement, and that was purely because of the social interaction and bonding that occurred.”

Depression is difficult to treat in older people - two-thirds of them don’t respond to initial drug therapy. Often when a patient doesn’t respond to a first drug, an additional drug is given, but that may prove tricky for patients who may sometimes already be taking all the way up to 10 other drugs for other health problems.

“This is very easily translatable into community care,’’ said Dr. Lavretsky. “As their health improves, they may be able to reduce the other drugs they are taking for pain or other problems.”

Link to the UCLA Study

Tai Chi and Depression Study (University of Queensland,  Australia)

Tai Chi to lose weight and ease depression

The University of Queensland, Australia has released an interesting study for anyone looking to lose weight.  Researchers found that the gentle, yet powerful, exercise known as Tai chi helps with obesity and excess weight, in a number of ways.  The Australian scientists discovered that tai chi:

• Improves body mass index (BMI);
• Reduces the amount of abdominal fat and overall waist measurements;
• Improves blood sugar balance–a critical element for maintaining a healthy weight or to lose weight;
• Reduces high blood pressure;
• Significantly reduces depression; and
• Improves the body’s use of insulin (insulin resistance)–a significant factor for weight gain and diabetes, among other serious health conditions.

Tai chi  is a Chinese internal martial arts often practiced to improve health. It is designed to facilitate the flow of fluids and Qi (life force) in the body, promoting good health and vitality. Tai Chi generally utilizes martial arts movements.

Tai Chi is suitable for most people, including those suffering from injuries and illness.

Meditation could help Attention Disorders

Giuseppe Pagnoni, PhD, Emory assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and co-workers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine changes in blood flow in the brain when people meditating were interrupted by stimuli designed to mimic the appearance of spontaneous thoughts. The study shows that experienced Zen meditators can clear their minds of distractions more quickly than novices.

The study realized in 2008 compared 12 people from the Atlanta area with more than three years of daily practice in Zen meditation with 12 others who had never practiced meditation.

While having their brains scanned, the subjects were asked to focus on their breathing. Every once in a while, they had to distinguish a real word from a nonsense word presented at random intervals on a computer screen and, having done that, promptly “let go” of the just processed stimulus by refocusing on their breath.

The authors found that differences in brain activity between experienced meditators and novices after interruption could be seen in a set of well defined areas of the brain.

After being interrupted by a word-recognition task, experienced meditators’ brains returned faster to their pre-interruption condition. This suggests that the regular practice of meditation may enhance the capacity to limit the influence of distracting thoughts. This skill could be important in conditions such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder and major depression, characterized by excessive rumination or an abnormal production of task-unrelated thoughts.

Read an abstract of the study

Read the full article (Good luck...)

Try Tai Chi for Knee Arthritis

Tai chi may help to reduce pain and improve physical function in people with knee arthritis, according to the results of a study published in the November 2009 issue of Arthritis Care and Research. Tai chi is a form of Chinese martial arts that uses slow rhythmic movements to encourage mental relaxation and improve balance. Now it seems that this traditional discipline is a reasonable treatment for older adults with arthritis of the knee.

Researchers from Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Mass. conducted a trial of 40 older adults with an average age of 65 years who had symptomatic arthritis of the knee. Study participants were randomly assigned to either 60 minutes of tai chi or twice-weekly sessions of attention control focused on wellness education and stretching for a period of 12 weeks. The knee arthritis patients who were assigned to the tai chi group reported significantly greater improvement in their arthritis pain. They also reported significantly greater improvements in physical function, depression, and health-related quality of life.

Tai chi is a mind-body approach which seems to be effective in treating arthritis-related knee pain in older adults who are otherwise healthy. The study authors point out that tai chi meets all of the current exercise recommendations for arthritis of the knee, including range-of-motion and flexibility exercises, muscle conditioning, and aerobic training. It may even be that the mental discipline of tai chi can help to minimize the negative effects of chronic arthritis by improving psychological sense of well-being.

Article by June Chen, MD in HealthandAge.com